Last night I listened to Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention as I entered receipts and payments due into Quicken. It was a damn good speech, as many others have noted. But there’s one aspect of it that I thought was brilliant that no one else has pointed out (I’ve slightly edited down the New York Times’s transcript):
PRESIDENT CLINTON: …For the first time when America was on a war footing in our whole history, they gave two huge tax cuts, nearly half of which went to the top 1 percent of us.
(Chuckles.) Now I’m in that group for the first time in my life. (Applause.) And you might remember that when I was in office, on occasion, the Republicans were kind of mean to me. (Laughter.) But soon as I got out and made money, I began part of the most important group in the world to them…
Now, look at the choices they made, choices they believed in. They chose to protect my tax cut at all costs, while withholding promised funding for the Leave No Child Behind Act, leaving 2.1 million children behind. (Cheers, applause.) They chose to protect my tax cut while cutting 140,000 unemployed workers out of their job- training programs, 100,000 working families out of their child-care assistance, and worst of all, while cutting 300,000 poor children out of their after-school programs when we know it keeps them off the streets, out of trouble, in school learning, going to college and having a good life! (Cheers, applause.)
They chose, they chose to protect my tax cut while dramatically raising the out-of-pocket costs of health care to our veterans, and while weakening or reversing very important environmental measures that Al Gore and I put into place, everything from clean air to the protection of our forests…
Now, if you like these choices and you agree with them, you should vote to return them to the White House and the Congress. (Boos.) If not, take a look at John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats.
And all I could think of was the thousands of Republican ‘bots listening who were confronted with the logical conundrum of “Tax cuts good…but Bill Clinton benefitted. Tax cuts good…Bill Clinton bad. Keep tax cuts…help Bill Clinton? End tax cuts…no! no! Error! Error!”
And their tiny little heads explode.
That was an excellent speech… there is nothing better than a slap of reality. One can only hope that this November the choices that American’s make are for change.